For years I’ve wanted to know exactly how to cook a game hen using lava, and thanks to Carlos I finally found a good set of instructions. I can get the banana leaves from the green house and the game hen (or equivalent) from Willie’s, but the lava is a bit of a problem. Hot air is easy enough to come by (we are a university, after all), but I’ve never seen it melt stone…
You will have to pop on back to the Portland area. We are keeping St. Helens warm for your cooking pleasure.
I wonder if it is the right temperature for tea?
I came to Reed in 1981, just over a year after St. Helens blew, and went there (or as close as you could get) a few times over next 10 years. The last time, though, about a dozen years ago and I’m sure the environment has continue to change. It was certainly amazingly cool to see how the ecosystem changed from the “moonscape” right after the explosion through successive stages of plant and animal life.
I’d love to come back to Portland, but the many complexities of life (insufficient time and money) make it impossible to visit all the places that I’d like to as often as I’d like :-).
I also did not get to see it firsthand, being several hundred miles south at the time. I did witness the ask spread across eastern WA a few months later. Pretty amazing. There has been a recent resurgence of activity inside the crater, which I was reminded of by your organic BBQ post. Being from Texas you are no doubt conscious of the fact that in the west we consider barbeque to be a verb, as in ‘we will barbeque some burgers’ and a noun, as in ‘we will cook burgers on the barbeque’.
When I was in Columbus in 1984 I had someone invite me to a Kentucky Derby party where barbeque would be served. “Barbequed what?” I said. “Just barbeque” he replied quizically. After a few rounds of this game I learned that somewhere east of Denver barbeque is primarily a noun describing meat that has been rubbed, slow cooked and slathered in sauce. Then I moved to Kansas City with my newfound vocabulary and gained 25 pounds eating the stuff while listending to live blues.
What a country.
There were a few of us Texans at Reed when I was there, and someone discovered a really good Texas BBQ joint in south Portland. It had appropriately tacky decor (lots of Lone Star beer signs and stuffed armadillos) and did real mesquite BBQ that was mighty tasty. It was a wonderful discovery for those of missing our home cooking.
I’ve never found a really good non-chain BBQ place up here in Minnesota (although I can imagine there might be some in the Cities), so I always visit Smokin’ Joe’s in Rogers, Arkansas, when we’re down visiting my folks. It’s a wonderful old-school BBQ joint, with the plastic table cloths and the cheap squeeze bottles of their different BBQ sauces. Great food, and guaranteed to shave weeks off your life expentency with every fork full.
The one thing I’ve never really found outside the south is a really good chicken fried steak. Sigh.