We’re happy that you’ve dropped by. Pull up a chair and have a drink while we turn on the radio and fire up the grill. We can swap stories, recipes and memories of days gone by. If you’re not in a rush, maybe we’ll even light a campfire and get the guitars and ukuleles out. In any case, we’ll share some good food and great company.
Make yourself at home.
On a day trip to Chicago recently, we stopped at the Michigan Avenue satellite location for the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture. Claudia’s grandmother was from Lithuania, so the country and its food and culture are always of interest to us.
Of course, we came home with a cookbook. The two things that interested me most were Kugula and bread.
The bread recipe in the book was fairly sparse, assuming that one already had a sourdough starter, so I had to research the best way to approach culturing one. I was lucky to find this guide from the Sourdough Archive site. I ordered some Dark Organic Rye Flour from Bob’s Red Mill, and got started. I had some experience with developing starters from wheat (and gluten-free sources as well), so the process wasn’t totally unfamiliar, though my success in creating finished products made with sourdough had been mixed.
Here’s how the starter looked on the morning of day four.
After a little more than a week of training the starter, it was time to bake. Although a lot of the material I read cautioned against baking with anything over 40% Rye Flour on the first attempt, I wanted to follow the recipe from the cookbook (100% Rye) as closely as possible.
I fed the starter on Sunday Morning and after it rose a bit prepared the “sponge” (preferment) of 100 grams starter, 300 grams of flour and 400 ml of water. This went into a warm spot to rise overnight. Monday Morning I mixed the dough, adding 700 grams of flour, 300 ml of water, 2 T honey, 2 T Caraway Seeds and 1 T salt and mixing it well. The dough went into a greased bread pan to rest and rise in a warm spot for four or five hours. I poked holes in the top using a chopstick to avoid what the Lithuanians call “flying roof” when it baked.
I baked it at 425 °F for fifteen minutes, then at 350 °F for another hour. It released from the pan easily, and I brushed the top with water as the recipe suggested.
After it cooled, I wrapped the loaf in a wet towel to rest overnight before slicing.
I have always loved what might best be described as peasant food. This Lithuanian Rye Bread ticks all the boxes. Simple ingredients yield a thing of rich, dense, complex goodness.
Claudia had a taste for grilled salmon this weekend, so we cooked a couple of Norwegian steaks on cedar planks on the Genesis. She harvested some dill from her herb garden for seasoning.
I don’t eat flesh, but she and her mom said that it was delicious.
They made a lovely salad and some roasted broccoli to serve along with baked potatoes (also cooked on the gas grill).
Later, we had tapioca pudding with raspberries for dessert.
Having grown up with Nat Cole’s version of The Christmas Song and the Ronettes’ Sleigh Ride, I’ve always romanticized roasting chestnuts at the holidays. On several occasions over the years I considered giving it a try, but fresh chestnuts were relatively difficult to obtain where I live, and what I learned about the process made it seem a little complicated, so I didn’t get around to it until 2024.
The first attempts roasting in the oven were underwhelming. They came out bland, mealy – and edible but unappetizing. I finally decided to give it one more go, on the Weber Kettle this time, and those were much better (and finally worth the bother).
Here’s the process I use, after much research into recipes, blog posts and YouTube videos, and our own trial and error refinements.
First, sort and wash the chestnuts. Discard any with mushy or papery skins, and be sure to inspect them for tiny insect holes. There are usually two or three in any one pound batch that need to be tossed.
Next, score an x shaped pattern on one side of each chestnut, just barely breaking through the skin. I used an inexpensive chestnut scoring tool from Amazon for this, but you could use a paring knife. Just be careful not to cut too far into the nut meat.
Soak the scored nuts in warm water for at least half an hour. I usually let them go for an hour while I’m getting the grill set up.
The coals and some wood chunks go on one side of the grill, and the pan for the nuts is placed over the other half for indirect cooking.
Keep a close eye on things after the first ten or fifteen minutes. At some point the skins will pop open where they were scored, and the meat will begin to get a nice golden brown color. The last batch I roasted were ready to remove from the grill after about 25 minutes.
Bundle up the roasted chestnuts in a damp towel in a bowl for a few minutes to steam and soften the shells. Once they’re cool enough to work with, peel off the shells and they’re ready to eat. I always try a few unseasoned, but then tend to put a little melted butter, maple syrup and Cajun seasoning on them. You could use any combination of sweet or savory seasonings you like.
The chestnuts have a mild flavor on their own, and the flesh is tender and chewy, so don’t expect the sort of deep nuttiness and crunchiness of things like peanuts or cashews or almonds and such. They’re definitely fun and unique, though, and add something to our holiday tables or as a warming snack on a chilly evening.
You can find chestnuts for roasting online. That’s not a paid link, so feel free to do a search to find your own merchant. The nuts are highly perishable, so keep them refrigerated until you’re ready to roast, and make sure you’re able to roast within a reasonable time of their arrival.
It’s also kind of cool to know more about the history of the American Chestnut, sadly now all but gone in the wild. It’s the tree that inspired the lyrics, back in the day when plentiful autumn harvests were still in memory.
I first tasted an apple fritter as a young man in my hometown of Decatur, Illinois, at the Van Zetti Bakery. It’s been my favorite donut-adjacent food for fifty years since.
Recently, we ran across Kent Rollins’ YouTube channel, and I was delighted to find that he has a recipe. Despite my trepidation toward deep frying, I decided to try it out. We picked up a bag of Granny Smith apples and a bottle of Fireball Whiskey on Saturday, and made these on Sunday Morning.
The first step was to dice the apples and sauté them in a little butter. Once they start to get soft and a little golden, I added a couple tablespoons of Turbinado Sugar and a tablespoon of dark brown. Then came a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, and finally a good splash of Fireball to deglaze the iron skillet. This all got set aside to cool while making the batter.
I beat two medium eggs well to start the batter, incorporating 3/4 cup of sugar and a tablespoon of melted butter. The dry mixture (1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a little grated nutmeg) went in next, along with 3/4 cup of Ginger Ale, as we didn’t have Mountain Dew on hand. By then the apples were cool enough to add, and the dough was ready for frying.
I used a little over an inch of vegetable oil in the bottom of a Dutch Over for frying, dropping in four large spoonfuls at a time once the oil was hot. The recipe made about a dozen and a half fritters, and they were just the right size for an individual serving – although everyone ate more than one.
The glaze was a cup of powdered sugar and a few teaspoons of Fireball, with a little more of the Ginger Ale to get the right consistency.
You can watch the whole process on Kent’s YouTube video. The recipe is here.
These were as delicious as I had imagined and hoped, and the frying was a lot less daunting and messy than I had feared. It’s the cowboy way. 🙂
The first Sunday of Summer 2025 was HOT. Here in the South Suburbs of Chicago, we had temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit all weekend.
Claudia had prepared a potato and green bean salad for a Midsummer party that we attended on Saturday Evening, and par cooked enough extra to grill on Sunday. She also made a nice green salad, and I grilled some Tofurkey Vegan Polish Sausages that we served with sauerkraut and mustard.
Claudia described it as “Summer on a Plate.”