The foodie truth, or why winter and Pinterest go together

A power chowder: Just add bacon

I have come to the conclusion that winter can be useful. I'm not a great fan of winter by any stretch of the imagination. If I were to rate the four seasons from favorite to permanently exile it to Siberia, it would go like this:
1) Summer
2) Fall (Truly, Virginia falls are absolutely splendid and a very, very close second to summer in my book. It's almost a photo finish. The only real issue I have with fall in Virginia is that every day you are that much closer to winter.)
3) Spring
97) Winter

So you can see that winter isn't exactly my favorite. I hate being cold and winter here just off Chesapeake Bay -- where the air is so thick with humidity on some days that you can actually catch it, put it in a Ziploc bag and watch it turn to water -- is a bone-chilling cold. It's a damp, miserable affair in which there are days where if I spend too much time outside I just can't get warm for the rest of the day.

One of the few redeeming qualities of a Tidewater Virginia winter is Pinterest. Seriously. I'm on Pinterest and I get the occasional Pin on my board or whatever you call it that just doesn't seem right to me.

For example, from actual things on my board I saw this morning it might go something like: "Top 10 Tips to Reduce Swelling During Pregnancy" (I don't even know where to begin with that. What sort of Pinterest algorithm came to the conclusion that I might be having problems with swelling when I'm pregnant? I've never, ever had swelling during pregnancy!) or "Amazing 2 Ingredient Makeup Remover -- You'll never go back to expensive department store versions again!" (I'm going to nip this in the bud right now before you draw conclusions about the things popping up on my Pinterest board: When it comes to makeup, I'm okay with using expensive department store versions of makeup remover because I believe that's something you definitely don't want to mess around with.)

What I find Pinterest useful for, when I don't need pregnancy or makeup tips, is finding recipes. Yeah Pinterest has lots of other cool features, like DIY stuff, parenting stuff (The one that cracks me up lately is all these Pins about "How I Survived Going From 2 Kids to 3" and "How to Decide If You Can Handle Going From Two Kids to 3" ... so naturally I'm thinking of writing a useful blog and throwing it up on Pinterest with the title, "How to Decide If You Can Handle Going From 13 Kids to 14" ... I bet it will get a ton of Pins.) and links to somewhat interesting and useful blogs.

But far and away the #1 Pinterest feature in my book is recipes. Especially on bone-chilling frigid winter days where the only redeeming quality of it is that it's a great excuse to make soup. I think that is the one thing I am thankful for when it comes to winter: It's the season of soup-making.

Recently I came across this soup recipe on Pinterest that I tried and let me just say -- and it's not bragging if it's true -- that the day I made it is the day I made the best soup in Gloucester County. I also want to say that Claire helped me out ... well technically she did all the heavy soup-making lifting and I was more like the sous chef to her head chef. Claire can flat-out cook. She's a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen. So the other day for this soup, I did the chopping and dicing and prep work and Claire expertly assembled, added, poured, stirred and lovingly coaxed greatness out of that pot.

The soup is called "Smokey ham, potato and corn chowder" and it was a huge hit in the Sabo house. I mean, it's got bacon, ham, cream cheese, potatoes ... there's a lot of things going right just in that grouping. So go ahead, hop on Pinterest and weed through the pregnancy, makeup and parenting pins and find it. You won't be disappointed.

The BEST Seafood Chowder Is My Christmas Present To You

We have a favorite Sabo family Christmas tradition that dates back to when the number of our kids was in the single digits, which is approximately the 2002 or 2003 time frame. It's soup. But not just any soup. This is a seafood chowder that the family looks forward to waaaaaayyyyy more than opening Christmas presents. Sort of. Maybe. Ish? Okay, so my seafood chowder takes a close second to the whole opening Christmas presents thing. But don't let that dissuade you from breaking out the heavy-bottomed stock pot and giving this seafood chowder a whirl in your kitchen. You will not be disappointed. I promise.

I found this recipe in The Oregonian and it's called "Portland Seafood Chowder." It makes 10 cups, which means I automatically double it. Or so. And I've modified it by adding more seafood to the point that basically if it swims, or crawls, or scampers, or filters in saltwater, it goes in this chowder. As a disclaimer, due to the nature of the ingredients it's an expensive soup to make. Which is why we only make it once a year. Which is also why I'm seriously considering launching separate Kickstarter and Gofundme campaigns to support our seafood chowder habit so that we can enjoy it more than once a year.

Without further ado, we give you the "Portland Seafood Chowder" recipe in all its gastronomical glory. Go forth and be a Pacific Northwest foodie aficionado.

12 oz. diced raw bacon
1 1/3 C finely diced onion
1 1/3 C finely diced carrot
1 1/3 C finely diced celery
1/2 C diced roasted red bell peppers
1 1/2 t dried dill weed
1 1/2 t dried basil
1 1/2 t dried marjoram
1 1/2 t cajun spice mix
3 T all-purpose flour
1/2 C lightly hopped ale
1 10-oz. can baby clams
2 8-oz. bottles clam juice
4 C diced raw potatoes
6 to 8 fresh mussels, scrubbed & debearded
1/4 lb. cubed firm white fish such as snapper or cod
1/4 lb. smoked salmon, flaked
1 C whipping cream
salt & pepper to taste

* Among the seafoody items I add with liberality (one of the few times in my life I'm a liberal):
crab meat
oysters
baby shrimp

In a heavy-bottomed stock pot, cook the bacon over medium-low until it is brown. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook over medium-low heat until the carrots are almost tender. Add red peppers.

Stir in the dill weed, basil, marjoram and cajun spice mix. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Add the ale, the juice from the clams (reserve the drained clams for later), and the bottled clam juice. Stir until smooth and then add the potatoes. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Add the mussels, white fish, smoked salmon, reserved clams and any other additional seafood, cover and simmer for 3 to 5 minutes or until the mussels are opened and the white fish is done. Discard any mussels that do not open. Stir in the whipping cream and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Merry Christmas!

Life Is A Bowl Of Soup. With Sausage.

Getting prepped for soupalicious.

It's hard to explain my love affair with soup. I just really like making soup. Perhaps it's the very nature of a good soup; taking disparate ingredients and blending them together into something beautifully tasty. Which sounds sort of like our family. We have some legit kooks (a butternut squash or wild rice), some very sensible and level-headed family members (that would be corn), some who would be described as "normal" (a good chicken broth) and then there's one who's fairly whacked (that would be me, the onion).

A key ingredient for some of my favorite soups is sausage. A good smoked sausage, like your kielbasa, is an absolute delight in a soup. Why am I drawn to sausage? Maybe it's because I can relate. Making sausage isn't real pretty, I understand. Family life isn't real pretty sometimes either. But you throw sausage in the fire -- or at least a frying pan -- and oh, what a delight. Life for a big family can feel like sausage making and then you get thrown into the fire. The end result through all that trauma and fire is quite delectable. If you're eating sausage that is. For a family, at least our family, if you can survive all that squeezing and grinding and refining fire, then it's a beautiful picture of how all these different parts can work together and come out good. Or something like that.

The real back story to this blog post is I'm trying to wax poetic about making soup so I can post a blog post. (Did I just use the word "post" three times in a sentence? I need an editor.) So I'm going all symbolic with soup and sausage and family life ... let me know if it isn't working. Before you make any more fun of me, I'll just quit and offer up the recipe for Emeril Lagasse's smoked sausage, butternut squash and wild rice soup. It appears that Mr. Lagasse is pretty handy in a kitchen. (Editor's note: Matthew! Saying Emeril Lagasse is "pretty handy" in a kitchen is like saying Monet was "pretty handy" with a paintbrush. Author's reply: Oh. Well, then I'll say that Mr. Lagasse can cook good.) 

Here's the recipe, courtesy of the Food Network. Enjoy: Le soup extraordinaire

A Party In A Jar: Canning For Dummies

This summer I have returned to my roots. I started canning again. Oh canning, how I have missed thee. The day after we arrived in Oregon in July, I ran out to a local farm outside of Canby and bought two flats of berries. One flat of Marionberries and one flat of boysenberries. These two types of berries are large, sweet, delicious and addictive. As any self-respecting Oregonian will tell you. I promptly made 30 pints of jam and they are delicious, if I don't say so myself. Superior, far superior I tell you, to what you can buy in the store.

Back in the day when we lived in Oregon we had easy access to berries. Raspberries, strawberries, boysenberries, black raspberries, Marionberries ... some of that was due in large part to our good friends Mark and Bob Webber, whose family had a berry farm on the outskirts of Canby. They would actually give us flats berries. You just can't find friends like those anywhere.

Anyway, things changed when we moved to Virginia and the berries, peaches, pears, cherries, apples for applesauce, cucumbers for pickling and other produce are harder to come by, depending on where you live. I have very fond memories of canning quarts of peaches in Oregon and opening a jar in winter and savoring every bite. If you've never had home-canned peaches, why I dare say you haven't lived yet.

I had fully planned to can green beans from our garden this year but we were in Oregon for the four weeks that our pole beans were producing ... so that didn't work out so well. Home-canned green beans are simply exquisite, my friend. Trust me. Anyway, we had friends give us oodles of tomatoes recently so last night I canned up some pints. I plan to buy another box today from the local farmer's stand and can up some more. These will go in chili, soups, sauces and a multitude of other dishes. In addition to having a superior taste to what you fetch from a store in a can, they are healthier without all the preservatives, additives and other dangerous chemicals and whatnot that are added. My jars of canned tomatoes consist of tomatoes, water and a little lemon juice. Basically it's nutritious and delicious in a jar.

Here's the deal with canning though. Maybe there's a stigma to it. You think of canning and something like this old photo from the Oregon State University Extension Office comes to mind:

Nothing could be further from the truth. Real men are canning produce. In their big boy jeans and t-shirts. The big hangup for men in canning their peaches, tomatoes and jams might be one thing: Following directions. Most men are born without the `following directions' gene. We don't need no stinkin' directions. We don't even need maps. (Which, truth be told, is how most of the known world was discovered. Men were heading in a certain direction in or on their boat, ship, camel, horse, wagon, Jeep, or whatever, refused to consult their map, or follow the stars, or read the compass, or check Google maps -- or use whichever navigation tool that was supposed to guide them -- and they ended up completely lost. Rather than admitting they were lost, however, they "rebranded" their journey, to use a marketing term. Suddenly they "discovered" a new land while on an "exploration" and labeled themselves as "explorers." Sure is a better label than going down in history as the "dude who got totally lost," eh?)

Men, when it comes to canning you have to follow directions. Look at it this way, great men follow directions. Case in point: Noah. Imagine if Noah hadn't followed God's directions to build the ark. We probably wouldn't be here because Noah would have "known how to do this himself" and he would've cobbled together some sort of raft made out of old wood pallets with a bed sheet for a sail and called it good. Now the sheep probably would've walked right onto the "ark" because, well, sheep are dumb. But I imagine the elephant would've looked at the monkey and said, "Um, no." The genius of Noah was his faithfulness, commitment, perseverance and, wait for it, ability to follow directions.

Trust me, if you follow directions when it comes to canning, you will not be disappointed. It's easier than you think and I never have thought after enjoying the fruits of my work, "Instead of canning that unbelievably tasty jar of jam I should have wasted my time surfing the Internet." Directions are a click away on this thing called the "Internet" and here in Gloucester at the moment you can get a box of tomatoes for canning at amazingly affordable prices. You can use them for straight up canned tomatoes, or salsa, or spaghetti sauce ... options aplenty! Go forth and do some canning men!

Nail Guns 101: Or `That's Not A Toy Gun'

Serious remodeling, circa 1997 in Prineville. That's me, on the right of course.

Remodeling is a way of life in the Sabo house. Since roughly 1997 in Prineville, Ore., through houses literally coast to coast, the sweet sounds of a Skil saw, Milwaukee sawzall, Makita compound miter saw, finish nail guns, jigsaws, drills and assorted other power tools have been the norm for our family. We've tackled an addition that more than doubled the size of our house in Prineville. We basically built a 4,000-square-foot house in Corvallis, Ore., in a project that was supposed to be a "remodel" but ended up being virtually "new construction." We've manufactured bookcases and entertainment centers, remodeled kitchens and bathrooms, painted, repainted, trimmed out, sanded, spackled, torn down, built up and everything in between.

Somehow, miraculously, no one has suffered serious injury. We've had close calls; I remember being grabbed by my dad on a scaffolding after I started falling from two stories up while putting in a window at our Prineville house. That would've hurt. I popped my shoulder out a time or two, or maybe three or four, while working on our Corvallis house. That did hurt. Every time. I'm notorious for suffering cuts and scrapes on the smallest of projects; I pretty much donate blood anytime a power tool or hammer is involved. Some of us have stepped on rusty nails or screws, or mistook a thumb for a nail, or had a misfire on a nail gun. On our latest project a person very dear to me handling a cordless drill had an unfortunate catastrophe with it during a cabinet installation that resulted in a gash in my hand. That was a bloody mess. There's been other incidents, such as the time a huge burn pile of construction debris was lit on fire and that turned out to be just a little bit too close to our house. The Corvallis Fire Department showed up for that one. But our brand new house didn't go up in flames and that's all that mattered. It gave the neighbors something to talk about, that's for sure.

It's actually a pretty good track record of safety when you think about it. With all these kids running around and power tools everywhere and we all have all our digits and limbs ... God is good to us. That's not to say there haven't been close calls with the power tools. I was reminded of this tonight when I was using a finish nail gun on some toe kicks and quarter-round trim I was working on in our new kitchen we're finishing up. I was on the floor working and put the nail gun down to take a measurement and when I turned around Seth was eyeballing the tool and reaching for it. Like he was apprenticing or something and was going to lend me his expertise. I managed to remedy that situation right quick and got the nail gun out of harm's way. There's some built-in safety features on that nail gun and he really couldn't have done any damage but sheesh these kids are quick these days. It was also a good "Parenting 101" reminder for me that every parent surely has heard: Don't leave the locked and loaded nail gun on the floor.