Hey Gang!

This is the time of year when many go on exciting vacations. What have been some of your most fun food discoveries from your travels?

I remember fresh brook-trout from a stream not twenty feet from our tent... a mushroom tasting-menu (like 15 different mushroom dishes!) from a woodsy lodge on the Columbia River in Oregon... and the best beer-battered halibut in the world in Washington's San Juan Islands.

I also remember as a child my family went on a driving vacation out west and I ate buffalo for the first time just across the South Dakota/Wyoming border in the shadow of the Tetons. And in Cripple Creek, Colorado there was an old fashioned Candy Store that sold rope licorice from a spool BY THE FOOT! ...and feeding wild deer 'Nilla Wafers by-hand at the swinging bridge of the Royal Gorge.

Oh, Lord, Kevin. There have been so many.

There was the time we went in search of the perfect crabcake, for instance, along Chesepeake Bay's eastern shore. Came as close to being seafooded out as possible.

The time we fished for grayling in Sweden, and helped our host's wife make traditional flatbread in a beehive oven. And later listened, enthralled, as she joined the other women singing the cows home.

And the ultimate surf & turf---Atlantic salmon and Ruffed Grouse---as the highlight meal during the ultimate cast & blast, at the Mirimichi Lodge, in New Brunswick.

On a multi-day wagon ride in the ruts of the Oregaon Trail we watched a yougster who'd never even seen an open fire before eventually cook dinner one night. Can't remember persactly what we ate that night---some version of 40-mile stew no doubt. But sharing his joy of discovery remains with us to this day. That and the wagonmaster bidding 9 ponies for Friend Wife after she made her signature colonial apple cake in one of his Dutch ovens.

'Mornin' Brook,

I'm jealous of your trip to Sweden- have always wanted to go... guess I just got a thang for the north-country (by the way- Atlantic Salmon? What's that? :eek: ).

Your 40-mile stew brought back memories of this cabin full of college kids I used to live near in Denali Park. These boiz were all city-slickers and didn't know much about cooking OR cabin-living. (one dude's answer to not wanting to use the outdoor crapper was simply to never eat!)

Anyway, these kids only ever ate ONE thing all summer long: "Cowboy". That's what they called it. Although it's not as boring as it sounds- 'cause it literally NEVER was the same thing twice! They opened cans, boxes, & bags- dumped the contents into a dutch oven then added granulated garlic and water, then simmered it over a campfire 'til their hunger pangs could no longer be ignored.

One night it might be nothing but beans. Next night's version of "Cowboy" didn't have a bean in it! You'd think to keep track they'd at least have written them down as "Cowboy 1" and "Cowboy 2". Nope. Just "Cowboy". Funny. But those bois survived!

I did not have to travel far just out my front door across the street and hang out, kick a rock, and shuffle my feet in the dirt, and look totally bored with life.

Then I'd hear it...."Venir aqui Catie" and there my elderly Cuban neighbor would be, calling out her back door to me "You wanna to eat?" Of-course I'd smile shyly and say back to her "Si Abuela"! (Yes Grandmother!). I'd practically run into her yard right into the house. Her back door led right into the kitchen, there first she would let me taste her Pappas Rellenos (Fried Cuban Potato Balls stuffed with a tasty Ground Beef filling in the center) next it would be crisp deep-fried Cuban pasties lovingly filled with Gauva preserves and dusted outside with powdered sugar, then a big pot of black beans that were the most flavorful black beans in the whole world!!!

She'd have me taste each item and then ask "You like?" to which I would reply "Mucho Abuela, muy mucho ver". She would then instruct me to sit down at the dining room table and the feast was spread!!! There I would be at her table all by myself (I never knew why, but everyone else would be gone from the room except she and I, they'd all be off busy watching TV or listening to the Spanish radio station) and she would bring out plates heaped with all these delectable Cuban foods, and I would eat and we would visit and I would be smiling from ear to ear between bites and bragging on her cooking . The feasting usually lasted until I could barley push myself away from the table and we would wind down our visit. I would leave thoroughly satisfied and happily well-fed but most of all loving my Abuela !!!

So to make a long story short these are my favorites: Pappas Rellenos, Deep Fried Guava Pastries, and Black Beans with Yellow Rice!!! Eaten on a very mini-vacation right across the street from my parents home:)

P.S. She once invited my whole family to a big "Fiesta" that they were hosting, and the men had dug a pig pit in the yard and roasted a pig over the spit, there were other dishes and great latino music and I remember we had a ball!!! And that roasted pig was delicious, the company terrific, and the music upbeat!

>by the way- Atlantic Salmon? What's that?<

It's what those coarse, slimy, red-fleshed things you got would taste like if they weren't poor relations.

But, then again, anyone from a place where they consider spruce grouse edible just has to need ejumacating.

Seriously, you wanna talk about good eats. That lodge has a Frech chef who works wonders with game. We began that meal with a woodcock appetizer based on maple syrup. Then trussed salmon steaks a la George River and grouse breasts with grapes in a champagne sauce.

All the protein had been swimming or flying that morning. Incredible!

Unfortunately, there's only a two week window for that sort of cast & blast. And there's a long waiting list of wealthy sportsmen wanting to give it a try. So it becomes, literally, a once in a lifetime experience.