View from the Mountain: Partners in Cooking and Life

When I was chasing cows around our farm in Canada, I would have laughed if someone told me that I would replace my wife as the bread baker. I still remember the days that she would bake four or five loaves of oatmeal bread and the kitchen smelled heavenly every time I entered during the day.

I know that cooking together with my wife has become a great joy. We have found a few regional recipes to carry with us as we have wandered from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to Virginia, the North Carolina coast and back to the rolling hills of the Piedmont.

The meals that we have cooked are almost always based on simple ingredients. We are blessed to have grown up in families that were close to the land. Fresh vegetables and food direct from the farm or sea often have delighted us and made our meals special.

We were blessed to have grown much of our own food for over a decade. We have never lost those skills or the appreciation of truly fresh food grown in soil that has had enriched with compost that we have made. While we have not got our composting started after our recent move, for years on the coast we made compost from our food waste and grew our vegetables in it. The gardening space we had was limited but what we grew was impressive.

For much of our life, we were too busy to do much more than get food on table. That is probably normal for a family that raised three children while running a farm with two hundred Angus cattle. After we left the farm, I spent nearly twenty years traveling and selling computers for Apple. It was only as my career at Apple was winding down that I got the time to start cooking seriously. My wife, Glenda, kept us all fed during my many years of hard work on the farm and traveling for Apple. Fortunately, she still loves to cook and has created countless wonderful meals in the kitchen with her many skills. We are writing a cookbook, Recipes for Our Lives. It is an effort to share some of Glenda's and my cooking skills which I maintain are a direct line from her mother and my mother, both excellent Southern cooks. I offer up our attempt at recreating my mother's fried chicken as proof of our cooking heritage.

I love baking bread, rolls, and biscuits. I can grill salmon or spatchcocked chicken to perfection and whip up a delicious beef Stroganoff without looking at a recipe. When the family comes, I am always in charge of breakfast. Whether it bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs, I often manage to serve the meal with fresh biscuits hot out of the oven. I do not even measure the ingredients for my biscuits any longer. For special occasions I can even dip into the country ham supply for those who appreciate it.

However, none of that compares to the clam chowder that my wife makes. My affair with clams began before I got married. When I made that fateful first drive up to Boston in the fall of 1967, I had no idea where I was going, but I had a map, a car, and enough money for a few nights on the road. I believe I stopped the first night someplace in Conneticutt after driving right through New York on I95 at rush hour. Those were the days, my blue GTO convertible could take me anywhere.

The second night, I stopped just south of Boston and on a lark I tried some fried clams. I was hooked. There were a couple of places in Harvard Square that had great fried clams, but soon I discovered clam chowder. When real whole fried clams were nowhere to be found, there was always a bowl of chowder to sample. Even today, I judge a restaurant by the quality of its clam chowder. It is easy to make thick chowder with no taste or one so rich that you can't taste the clams. Making a great bowl of clam chowder with just the right taste of clams is the sign of a great cook.

Maybe looking for that great bowl of chowder was one of the good reasons to go live in the Maritimes for sixteen years. It is a little ironic that the best clam chowder that I have ever eaten comes from someone who never met a clam until she was over twenty one and got whisked away to Nova Scotia as a new bride.

I don't remember when my North Carolina bride made her first pot of clam chowder. Perhaps she was searching for a meal that would bury forever the boiled salt cod fish, potatoes, salt pork and beer that was a maritime favorite. Sometime in the first year in St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia, Glenda remembers making her first pot of clam chowder. We even tried it with fresh steamed clams but we figured out they were better dipped in butter and that the ones in a can did just fine for chowder. Over the years she has refined "the recipe."

Not many cold days go by in the fall before I start feeling like I need some clam chowder. It usually takes hinting for a week or so before we finally hit the grocery store and buy the ingredients.

Now six bowls and a couple of days into the latest batch, I can say it is the best yet. Here is the recipe. It is one of those "cook until done" recipes with lots of room for experimentation. While we have other versions of this recipe, this is Glenda´s original

There are not many exact measurements but with the spirit of adventure you can make this chowder your own.

Cook until perfect five slices of bacon. Drain bacon on paper towel and save for later.

Leave the bacon drippings in the frying pan.

Take one large onion diced, one rib of celery diced and add to frying pan.
Cook until translucent in the bacon drippings.

Peel and cut into 1/2 inch cubes three large potatoes - yellow potatoes work best
Add potatoes, cooked onions and celery to a large pot.
Add water until it is two inches over the vegetables.

Cover, bring to a boil and simmer covered until potatoes are tender.
Add three tablespoons of Minor's Clam Base or Chicken Base

Add undrained three large cans (8 oz) of minced clams.
Bring back to a good simmer and let simmer for a few minutes.

Thicken chowder with flour and milk mixed together (approximately 1/2 cup flour mixed with 1 1/2 cups of milk- we use skim milk) Gradually add, while stirring constantly.

Cook until thickened, you might need to add more flour and milk, just experiment until you find how you like it.

Add one pint of half and half, simmer until hot, DO NOT BOIL after you add the half and half.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with bacon crumbles and an optional 1/2 teaspoon of butter in each bowl. We have gotten bread bowls from Panera but usually we just serve with a piece of my fresh baked sourdough bread.

May the great clam be with you. Stay tuned for our cookbook.