Ethnic Eats

The more I think about it, we've got lots of ethnic food around the Cheboygan area. Italian, Mexican, Polish, Chinese, Thai, but no Czech. For that you've got to go to Traverse City, some hundred miles away. I would have never suspected the Dairy Queen of having anything like that, though. I haven't been inside that place in decades.

Pasties were brought to the U.P. by Cornish miners a long time ago. They may be found in several Cheboygan stores, but the best ones are sold by the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans. Once a month they and their wives get together at their clubhouse and make a whole lot of them. You can buy them at the clubhouse, which is a few miles out of town, or at the entrance of the Family Fare, which allows all kinds of sales by clubs and organizations. The vets haul them there in a big army truck, which they own. They also own a helicopter, but they don't fly it. It's mounted on a pedestal in front of their clubhouse, a relic of the Vietnam War on permanent display.

As far as I know, pasties are made with regular pie crust, folded around the filling and pinched together on one thick side so that you can hold the thing with coal blackened hands and eat everything up to the thick part, and then throw the thick part away. We, however, prefer to eat the whole thing with a knife and fork on a plate with beef gravy poured all over it. The filling is hamburger meat, potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, and onions. You bake the whole thing in the oven, just like a pie. You can substitute other meat for the hamburger, but then you should probably pre cook the meat.

I don't know about flatbread, but regular bread will keep in the freezer for a long time. I make my own, three loaves to a batch, slice it after it's cooled, and then put the slices into four zip lock freezer bags, one gallon size. One bag goes into the refrigerator, and the other three go into the freezer. When I take a bag out of the freezer, I open the zip lock and dump out the loose ice crystals that have formed. You can usually skip that step with store bought bread. Then I set it on the table with the bag open for an hour or so before zipping it back up and putting it into the refrigerator for tomorrow's use. I have heard people say that bread kept in the refrigerator doesn't keep as well as bread stored at room temperature, but that has not been my experience.

I looked up Old Dog's link about wood splitters. Some interesting videos, but I'll just stick with my store bought hydraulic unit. It may be slower, but it's at least as fast as I am. I would never be able to keep up with some of those faster machines. I also like the way mine works in the vertical mode because I don't have to pick up the bigger blocks, I can roll them or push them with the tractor right up to the unit. Then I can work from a kneeling position and pass the split pieces into the front end loader. When the bucket is full, I get on the tractor, drive it to the barn, and dump the wood on the pile.