Texas Bar-B-Que and Bavarian Red Cabbage

They serve up sausage at the Salt Lick Bar-B-Que in Driftwood, TX. The Salt Lick is a place Austin locals take visitors to for a taste of authentic Texas Bar-B-Que. I had a sample on a recent visit with my sister and her husband who retired to Georgetown, TX.

The Salt Lick was packed on the Saturday night when we were there. By the size of their parking lot and by the presence of the Local Sheriff directing traffic into it, packed seems to be the norm rather than the exception. The night we were there, the wait to be seated was more than an hour.

No big deal, the Salt Lick is an event as much as a restaurant. Bring a cooler of beer and wine and enjoy the wait on the large patio outside. During that time, a waitress brought a large platter of Salt Lick sausage for the waiting patrons to sample.

That which in Texas is simply sausage, in Wisconsin has a name – Smoked Polish Kielbasa. At home, I like Bavarian red cabbage, or sauerkraut with my Kielbasa. In an epiphany I saw my Bavarian cabbage beautifully wed on a plate to bar-b-que ribs or brisket.

The bar-b-qued ribs and brisket at the Salt Lick were excellent, better than I can make at home. They were served with a disappointing run of the mill coleslaw and a mindless potato salad. Had they been served with my Bavarian red cabbage the meal would have been raised to very lofty heights.

Whether this recipe truly Bavarian or not, I don’t know. It’s inspired by the fine German restaurants in the Milwaukee area, of which once there were many but now are only a few. In those restaurants this mildly sweet-sour cabbage was served with roast duck, sauerbraten and the like. When serving duck or sauerbraten at home, I always serve red cabbage with it.

But my Bavarian red cabbage, at heart, is a comfort food. It’s the main dish to be served with a few thick slices of Kielbasa or corn beef, some slices of hearty rye bread such as pumpernickel and a good dark beer. With duck this recipe will serve four, with a few thick slices of Kielbasa it serves two.   

The most important ingredient in this recipe is not explicitly listed. It’s the bacon fat. It’s used to thicken the liquid the cabbage is boiled in into a velvety sauce. While the food Nazi’s would have us believe bacon fat is poison. In moderation all things are good. And bacon fat is one of the many edible oils our peasant grandparents and great-grandparents took full advantage of. Goose grease, tallow and lard are all in their place proper, good and necessary.  

A gingersnap made with goose grease or duck fat is out of this world delicious. I know because that’s how mom made them. If make with bacon fat on the other hand, they would be kind of funky. I know this from mistaking the liquid smoke for vanilla in whipping up a batch of chocolate chip cookies once. But I digress.

Bavarian Red Cabbage:

½ Head Red Cabbage Coarsely Chopped (1 inch x 1 Inch)

1 Apple Cored, Pealed and Chopped

1 Onion Coarsely Chopped

3 Slices of Bacon ½ Inch Dice

Balsamic Vinegar

Water

2 TBS Flower

1 tsp Caraway Seed

Combine the red cabbage, onion, apple and caraway seed in a pot and cover with a ½ and ½ mix of water and vinegar. Fry the bacon and when crisp add it to the pot with a slotted spoon to drain excess fat back into the fry pan. Deglaze the fry pan with vinegar and water then whisk in flour to make roux.

Bring the cabbage to a boil, adding water or vinegar as needed and to adjust the taste. When the apples have softened almost to mush drain of any excess liquid (it should not quite cover the cabbage), return to a boil and slowly add the bacon fat roux to thicken the remaining liquid into a sauce.  

Then, and this is important, eat hearty and enjoy.

Wisconsin's Family Fight

The Duluth News Tribune reported, March 13: “Wisconsin’s protracted family fight over the budget and public employee unions moved to this Bayfield County town Saturday evening, as embattled Gov. Scott Walker spoke at an invitation-only event and was greeted by at least 2,000 angry protesters outside.”

One of the protest organizers, Scott Griffiths, told the Tribune: “The thing that really got me here is the disparity of wealth that has grown way too out of hand. This is not a Wisconsin thing. This is a global pandemic of wealth buying power.”

On Thursday Walker signed his budget repair bill. The bill applies directly only to state employees. It limits their collective bargaining “rights” to salaries only. Until now benefits, work rules and sick time was all on the table. It also required that state workers contribute 5% of their pay to their pension plan, and increased the contribution from 6% to 12.5% of the cost of their health insurance.

It also: allowed public employee the option to not join the union; ended the deduction of union dues from pay check and; required an annual recertification of the union.

The governor has made it clear the he intends to close $3.5 billion projected state deficit by reducing state aid to schools, counties and municipalities. His budget repair bill offers those the public employers to adopt the same measure with their public employee unions. He says these are the “tools” they need to balance their budgets. 

    

Since he signed the bill, 16 lawmakers are facing recall campaigns. The secretary of state is postponing publishing the law for ten days, the full amount of time allowed. New laws are normally published within 24 hours after they are signed and take effect after publication. Many believe the walkout by all fourteen Democratic senators and now the delayed publication of the law is a stalling tactic to allow public unions time to extend existing contracts.

Finally, a number of lawsuits have been filed challenging the constitutionality of bill.

Wisconsin is locked in a battle between public employee unions and its taxpayers.  Therein lays the irony of Mr. Griffiths’ statement to the Tribune. The median household income in the state is just over $50 thousand. The average Milwaukee Public School teacher’s annual compensation is just shy of $100 thousand and upon retiring enjoys guaranteed pension benefits with lump sum values in excess of $1 million (based on retiring at age 62 with a $40 thousand per year pension).

The rich in Wisconsin are the State’s public employees who buy political power through their unions. This battle isn’t about collective bargaining. It isn’t about contributions to benefits. It’s entirely about political power.

Weirdness in Madison

In spite of all the political weirdness in Madison, I will offer you a bowl of sanity with a fine cream of chicken, wild rice and shitake mushroom soup.

For this you will need:

2 qts. Full Bodied Chicken Broth

4 oz Wild Rice

1 Large Onion finely diced

3 cup Diced Chicken

½ cup Cream

4 oz Fresh Shitake Mushroom sliced (8 oz would be better)

½ tsp Paprika

¼ tsp Thyme

2 Tbs Butter

2 Tbs Flour

This recipe begins with a full bodied chicken broth. I was fortunate to have the left over carcass from a roasted pasture raised chicken on hand. I simmered this in one quart of water and one quart of low sodium canned chicken broth for two hours until the meat was falling from the bones, but had not been rendered into tasteless mush.

I picked the bones clean and returned them to the pot and let the broth simmer for another hour. The meat from the carcass, wings and neck amounted to three cups.  There are other roads to two quarts of rich chicken broth and three cups of meat. My pasture raised chicken was a four dollar a pound gift. I did not want any of it to go to waste. In the end this chicken was a roast chicken diner for four, soup for six and three sandwiches.

In any case, with two quarts of rich broth at hand, add the wild rice, shitake mushrooms, diced onion, thyme and paprika. Bring to a hard boil, cover, reduce heat to low and simmer, about and hour, until the rice softens and expands. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a sauce pan over a medium burner then mix in the flour and allow it to brown slightly into a blond roux.

When the rice has cooked bring the soup to a boil, add the roux and cream to thicken it, then add the chicken to finish. Adjust seasoning and serve.  The result is a very rich and savory soup. In that there is sanity.

As for the madness in Madison, at issue is a projected $3.5 billion shortfall in the next biennial budget or just over 5% of the roughly $60 billion the government is on track to spend over the next two years. It’s not a big deal, except it is a structural deficit that the state has encountered every budget session for the past ten years or so. In the past it had been closed though a combination of tax increases, borrowing and wonderfully creative accounting.

The current governor campaigned on specifically on eliminating this structural deficit without new taxes or more debt. In the 2010 election the governorship and both houses of the legislature went from Democratic to Republican control. Much of the weirdness in Madison over the past two weeks has been the result of an insane denial of the new political reality and is a temper tantrum if you will.

But there is deeper insanity. That is the economic reality that few of us will acknowledge. In this blog I’ve tended to view things from the perspective of households. I believe households are foundation upon which so much rests.

There are roughly 2 million households in Wisconsin. At $30 billion a year, the state is spending roughly $15 thousand dollars per household. Add to that local property taxes and that number begins to approach 20 thousand. Given that there are just under 115 million households in the US. At $4.5 trillion a year, the federal government is spending another $34 thousand per household per year. 11 thousand of that is barrowed on our behalf.

The median household income in the US is around $50 thousand per year. Given that reality, temper tantrums simply will not do.

Abe Lincoln & Bill Gates -- American Peasants Both

In my last post I happily reported peasantry as a way of life is quite alive right here in the US. It’s just that we have failed to recognize it
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Rather than thinking about a subsistence farm we should be thinking about what that farm really means. It means economic self reliance. As importantly, it offers the individual the greatest amount of freedom to go about his business as he sees fit and as he pleases.

Our modern peasants are those among us who have the means to be economically self reliant. That includes the ten percent of those currently employed who are self employed, but it also includes those who while they might be employed in larger organizations could support themselves by joining the ranks of the self employed.

Our republic was founded on the principle that all men are created equal and have the God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those rights are secured by property rights and the right to one’s labor. These are the foundation of our constitution and in turn are the foundation of a peasant economy.

Bill Gates is a peasant, a very wealthy one, but a peasant nonetheless. Abraham Lincoln was peasant, but a great president who by abolishing slavery set the second cornerstone for our peasant economy.

This observation by Allen C. Guezlo, posted on the National Review on Line, 2/12/11, outlines how “free labor” was necessary to secure the full measure of personal, political and economic freedom. The full article is long and scholarly, but is a must read.

“In a system of free labor, by contrast, the prospect of profit incites the laborer to work and save, then turn into an entrepreneur himself and hire others to labor. Hiring workers, in turn, not only fires the entrepreneur’s ambition, but opens up the path of ambition for his employees, “men who have not their own land to work upon, or shops to work in, and who are benefited by working for others.”

“Lincoln was aware that pro-slavery propagandists had begun claiming in the 1850s that laborers in northern factories were, in reality, no more free to make wage bargains than slaves on southern plantations. In fact, they claimed, “free labor” was worse off, because employers had no obligation to provide health care for mere wage-earners or to support them in childhood and old age, the way slaveowners did for their slaves.

““Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer.” A typical young man in this situation, he explained, “has for his capital nothing, save two strong hands that God has given him, a heart willing to labor, and a freedom to choose the mode of his work.” If the beginner really is willing, however, “he works industriously, he behaves soberly, and the result of a year or two’s labor is a surplus of capital . . . and in course of time he too has enough capital to hire some new beginner.” This, to Lincoln, was the key flaw in the slavery defenders’ case: Slavery offered no reward at all for sobriety or industry, while free labor was the “just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all — gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.”

“He did not deny that there were hired men who never became anything more, but that was not because of any defect in free-labor capitalism. “If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.” Ambition was not a crime to be punished. “We do not propose any war upon capital,” he insisted. Far from it: He wanted “to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else” and “leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can.” The genius of free labor, he explained to an audience of workingmen in New Haven, Conn., was that “when one starts poor, as most do in the race of life . . . he knows he can better his condition.” Lincoln wanted every “man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition. . . . That is the true system . . . and so it may go on and on in one ceaseless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!”

“To make this system work, Lincoln envisioned an active role for the federal government, but it was hardly that of a top-down managerial state. “The leading principle — the sheet anchor of American republicanism,” Lincoln said, is that “no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.” This was what guaranteed “individuals . . . the sacred right to regulate their own family affairs” and “communities . . . [to] arrange their own internal matters to suit themselves” without wanton interference by government. “The proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own” was the “foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.””

I’ll next be serving up a fine chicken, wild rice and shiitake mushroom soup. The thought of it pleases me. The making of it will please me. And I hope the eating of it will please me even more. It’s a peasant’s thing. Pursuit of happiness.

A Peasant's Funereal

I wrote what follows more than 20 years ago. It’s a description of my wife’s grandfather’s funereal who was in fact a peasant. I thought what I was witnessing was the end of peasantry, at least in western world. Happily, I’ve found I was mistaken.

Julius Kamenz, 95, died an old-timer.  His funeral was surprisingly well attended considering his age.  Most people have few friends left when they're 95, and are mourned only by immediate family.  Julius' funeral was standing room only, and all the more remarkable in that, since his arrival to the United States thirty six years ago, he refused to speak the language of his adopted land.

Lothar, Julius's son-in-law, lead a large choir in German hymns.  Passages of scripture were read first in English and then once more in German.  This bilingual order of service carried through to the eulogy.  The funeral ran somewhat long.  In fact, it seemed as two separate funerals were being conducted simultaneously; one directed toward and immigrant church, and the other aimed at the American born children of these immigrants.

While almost every one possessed a fluent command of English, There were many who found comfort in their native German.  And considering that Julius never spoke English himself, it wouldn't have been appropriate to conduct his funeral exclusively in English.

Somewhere into the second sermon, the German sermon, a general restlessness settled among the crowd. A reference first to Hitler and then Stalin sounded, and like a shot brought everyone to attention.  Unexpected, the reference seemed grossly misplaced in the context of a eulogy.  Only Julius' obituary, printed with the order of service and read after the invocation and opening prayer, gave a clue as to why this infamous pair should be mentioned at a man's funeral.

"Born on February 26,1893, in Tacherjackow, Russia," it spoke of a peasant born into the rich farm land of the Ukraine.

Julius Kamenz' ambition was to farm.  Prior to world war I, Russian agriculture hadn't drastically changed since the middle ages.  Julius expected no more from life than a piece of land and a good team of horses.

"In 1915," it continued, "during World War I, he and his parents were sent from their home in the Ukraine to Siberia."

Empires gave way to modern nation states.

The birth pains of an industrial age started taking a toll. Two-million Russians died in World War I.  Revolution, civil war and famine claimed nine-million more.  Refugees became a distinguishing feature of this century.

"They returned home four years later, and farmed for their livelihood," it went on. Stalin had his own vision for the modern world.  In 1927, it didn't include opposition.  By 1930, it excluded most of the Ukraine.  Again, famine claimed seven-million.  Another seven-million were arrested.  One-million were executed outright, and the rest sent to labor camps where most died.

The short obituary continued, "during World War II, the family fled from the Ukraine to Germany."

Two-million ethnic Germans, whose settlement in the Ukraine dated from the time of Catherine the Great, were either deported or fled from their homes. The Nazi occupation army wasn't an army of liberation from Stalin's tyranny.  In just two days, Nazi death squad, Einsatzgruppe C killed over 33,000 Jews in the ravine of Babi Yar, a few miles outside Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.  The horror of Stalin yielded only to the horror of Hitler.

Julius Kamenz knew both.  Pastor Babbel's mention of these two contrasted their ambition, power and final infamy, with the humble peasant who finally entered into the full glory of God.

And finally, "as many other refugees, they sought a new life in the United States.  In 1952, the family came to Milwaukee...Where Julius was employed as the grounds keeper/gardener at a convent.”

At a brief burial service the following morning, the family had the coffin reopened for those few who hadn't attended the funeral the night before.  This service included only family and a few friends.  It was conducted entirely in English.

Afterwards, the funeral director offered a rose to the widow. He went on to invite everyone to come and also claim a rose.  A solemn procession filed by a closed coffin.

Minestrone for Feeding the Soul

Minestrone for Six or Eight

I try to keep my recipes small, serving four to six. This is because I mostly cook for two.

This Italian style vegetable soup is impossible to make small. There is the beauty of it. It is a true peasant soup. It’s hearty, low cost, delicious and can be easily make in a quantity to feed and an army. Two of the ingredients are foods that when cooked blow up. The pasta and beans absorb significant amounts of liquid and prodigiously expand in both bulk and volume.

It’s a true miracle. Because we experience this blossoming on a regular basis we take it for granted. It is a miracle nonetheless. In fact if you examine the list of ingredients everything is mostly water. The vegetables, mostly water. The wine, mostly water.  The cheese starts out as milk. Even the pork sausage is at its source mostly water.

The mysteries of bread, beer and wine are miracles also. Food Inc. tends to blind us of that simple truth. In exchange for a few extra dollars it gives us convenience and in doing so mindlessly robs a small piece of our souls. All of those small chunks of soul taken by the industrial economy add up. It’s all unintentional to be sure. But it’s very real consequences ripple across society.

But I digress, now back to the soup. For it you will need:

Water

2/3 Cup of Dried Kidney Beans (Do not take the shortcut by using canned.)

½ LB of Dried Pasta (I used penne but small pasta shells or even broken spaghetti will work fine)

½ Cup of Red Wine

2 TBS Italian Seasoning

1 TBS Beef Soup Base or 2 Bullion Cubes

1 Pound of Hot Italian Sausage Links, cooked, skinned and cut into bite sized pieces

1 14.5 oz. Can of Diced Salt Free Tomatoes

1 Onion Diced

2 Zucchinis cut into bite sized pieces

1 Rib of Celery diced   

1 10 oz. Package of Frozen Chopped Spinach

1 ½ to 2 Cups of grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese or a combination of both

Double quick soak the beans in 3 cups water with the Italian Seasoning and beef soup base by bringing the water to a boil for about five minutes, cover and then turn off the heat and let sit for an hour. Bring to a boil again for about five minutes and once again let rest covered for about an hour.

The beauty of dried beans is that they take on the flavors of the liquids in which they are boiled while maintaining the own unique subtle flavor. Kidney beans and lima beans are not the same thing. This why, for this recipe and recipes like it, canned beans are not allowed.  The same ability to assume flavor of course is true with rice. With this in mind, the inventor of Minute Rice should be arrested and forever locked in prison for “high crimes” against humanity.  I have wandered off track again but we are, after all, considering the miraculous.

Meanwhile cut the vegetables and cook the sausages by gently boiling for about twenty minutes. Cool then remove the casings and cut into bite sized pieces. Once the beans are ready, almost tender, combine all ingredients except to pasta into a large soup pot. The liquid from soaking the beans and that from the canned tomatoes should cover everything with about two inches to spare. If not add more water.

Bring the soup to a boil then reduce to very slow boil for an hour to cook the vegetables and allow the broth to mature.

Cook the pasta el dente just prior to serving. Start it about twenty minutes before. Then either add it to the soup pot or the individual bowls when serving. Top everything with a generous helping of grated cheese and enjoy. This soup goes will with thick slices of French bread, broiled on both sides until lightly browned and topped with minced garlic and olive oil.

A Peasant Bean Soup for G.K.Chesterton

This is a traditional bean soup – a thick soup of beans, ham and ham stock and vegetables. This is a delicious peasant meal.  It is a peasant soup that G.K. Chesterton would be proud of.

I need to clear up what I mean by peasant because it seems I, like Chesterton, will be championing peasantry and a peasant economy.  Chesterton was a prolific writer in the first part of the twentieth century. In the mid-twenties when economic/social debate focused on socialism vs. capitalism he vigorously argued for a third way – distributism. “Three acres and a cow,” he called it or maybe his critics did. It envisioned an economy where individuals had the individual wealth (read private property) necessary to “make a living.” He viewed “capitalism” and “socialism” as two roads to the same dead end – soft slavery.

“…If capitalism means private property, I am capitalist. If capitalism means capital, everybody is is capitalist. But if capitalism means this particular condition of capital, only paid out to the mass in the form of wages, then it does mean something, even if it ought to mean something else.

“The truth is that what we call Capitalism ought to be called Proletarianism. The point of it not that some people have capital, but that most people only have wages because they do not have capital. I have made an heroic effort in my time to walk about the world always saying Proletarianism instead of Capitalism. But my path has been a thorny one of troubles and misunderstandings…”    

Chesterton’s notions on distributism seem to be grounded in Roman Catholic teaching on individual dignity, private property, subsidiarity and solidarity. They seem to point back to a Catholic medieval, an economy of peasantry, monastery and guild. But that’s no so.

I do not use the term peasantry in the sense of an uneducated pre-twentieth country bumpkin. Instead, I am looking toward the agrarian economy of Wendell Berry, or Thomas Jefferson for that matter. This economy can no longer be solely rooted in the agrarian countryside. Still the notion of self sufficient households within the context of community applies equally to our urban industrial commercial environment. And happily, peasantry surrounds us.

Sure it’s the family farm. It’s also the baker, the auto body shop, the plumber, the lawyer, accountant, programmer and the guy with a PHD in Philosophy who bought the dump truck and now collects garbage as an independent contractor. All of the small businessmen and independent contractors are our peasantry. These are the foundation of our true economy. And these are those whom, after the dependent social under class, are most violently laid siege by Chesterton’s proletarianism.

I know. I am a carpenter. I now carry a state issued, EPA federally mandated, picture ID that says I am a “lead safe renovator.” It’s all about proportion. It’s about the Big lording over that which should be local. The EPA lording over carpenters or the the U.S. Department of Education lording over local school boards are examples. Fannie May and Freddie Mac underwrite our mortgages rather than local banks and savings and loans. The list goes on and it’s all wrong. It’s all upside down.

The answer lays in Chesterton’s notion of proportion and the Catholic teaching on “subsidiarity.”

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1883 nonetheless, it goes: “The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which “a community of higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of lower order, depriving the latter of its functions…””

The community of the lowest order is of course the household. It’s the realm and kingdom of the peasant. With regard to what we eat the communities of higher order are forever interfering. These are many: the corporate communities; the community of nutritionists and food scientists; the federal and state governments with their overlapping food programs; and finally the many communities of the politically correct who seem to want to set our tables according to own sensibilities and agendas.

To all I offer a simple bean soup – a peasant’s fare – hearty and delicious. For four to six you will need:

1 ½ Cups dried beans

1 ½ Lbs. smoked ham hocks – about three

1 Large onion diced

3 Carrots diced

3 Ribs of celery diced

Ham soup base to taste

Onion powder to taste

Pepper to taste

A bit of thyme

1 ½ Quarts of water

In the water quick soak to beans by bringing to a hard boil for about five minutes then cover and let steep. Meanwhile, bake the ham hocks in a 350⁰ oven for an hour. Deglaze the baking pain with water then add the hocks and pan dripping to the beans. Bring the beans to a slow rolling boil. After about two hours the meat should be falling off the bones and the beans should be tender or nearly tender. Turn off the beans and remove the ham hock and let cool. Trim the meat from the bones. Forty-five minutes before serving bring the beans back to a boil, add the ham and vegetables then slow boil until done. Adjust seasoning and serve with garlic toast.