Tour of Fifty States: Kentucky's meal

My mom, a.k.a Granny, was born in Middlesboro, KY. Her mother’s family lived and worked the coal mines in the area. When doing research for this project, I discovered some pretty interesting facts about this little town of just over 10,000.

The city claims to be the only one in the United States built entirely inside such a crater, as well as the home of ragtime music and the oldest continuously-played golf course in the country.

The town of Middlesboro, built in the crater, was established in 1886 to mine iron and coal, although the town's founder, Alexander A. Arthur, apparently did not know of the crater's extraterrestrial origin. K. J. Englund and J. B. Roen, working for the U. S. Geological Survey, identified the impact basin in 1962. The Middlesboro crater forms part of the string of geological features that made the Cumberland Gap, a critical westward passage during the settlement of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley. Starting around 1775, the Gap became the primary route of transit for settlers moving west; between 1775 and 1810 as many as 300,000 settlers may have used the Gap.

Without Middlesboro crater, it would have been difficult for packhorses to navigate this gap and improbable that wagon roads would have been constructed at an early date. Middlesboro is also the only place in the world where coal is mined inside an impact crater. Cool facts!

On another note, in 2012 Kirstin and I took a long road trip and one of our stops was in Louisville, where we visited the Louisville Slugger baseball bat factory. That was a fun experience and got to bring home a mini bat. We also visited the home of the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs, and several Kentucky bourbon distilleries in and around Lexington. Had I known about the Brown Hotel and its world famous Hot Brown sandwiches, we’d have surely stopped to try the local favorite. Here’s a link to the hotel’s description and their recipe: http://www.brownhotel.com/dining-hot-brown .

Menu : Kentucky Hot Browns, Kentucky Wonder Beans, Kentucky Bourbon Fudge Pie

Outcome: We all think the Hot Browns came out very well. Cheesy, bacony, and just really good! The flavor combination can’t be beat. The pie was rich and fudgy with just the right consistency. Mmm good! We each had a piece and shared the last 2 slices with Granny and Grandpa…hope they liked it as much as we did!

Next up: Bill’s turn! He chose Virginia! Two weeks away…

Tour of Fifty States: Idaho's meal

It seems like forever since we did our last state meal … it’s been almost 2 months!  We had a triple birthday celebration, Thanksgiving, putting up the Christmas tree, a last soccer game, an end-of-season soccer party, tree decorating, cookie decorating, driving to Florida to pick up Matthew, a Dollywood trip, Christmas dinner with 15 people (!), returning Matthew to Florida, and an on-call weekend for Dad.  Whew.  Now it’s January and we can get back to a calmer schedule. 

Christmas was especially important and poignant this year.  First, we got to enjoy it with Matthew.  Normally he lives with us and spends Christmas with his father; but now that he lives with his father, he spent Christmas with us for the first time in many years.  Second, both of my brothers came to Christmas Dinner.  The 3 of us haven’t been together in a long time, let alone for a holiday meal.  Since we’re all getting older, we felt it important to be together with our parents at Christmas.  That thought brings me to the third point about Christmas being so poignant.  Bill’s stepmother Diane passed away on December 27 after her final Christmas with the rest of her family by her side.  She had a short but hard-fought battle with cancer.  All of us were sad to hear of her passing, but we are grateful that she no longer has to suffer in pain.  She will be missed. 

Menu :  Grilled Flank Steak with Mushroom Sauce, Duchess Potatoes, Blueberry Buckle

Outcome:  When everyone thinks of Idaho, they think, “POTATOES!”  Of course, I had to find the perfect potato recipe.  Plain old mashed or baked taters just wouldn’t cut it.  I came across the recipe for Duchess Potatoes and knew it would be perfect with the flank steak and mushrooms.  My piping bag and I had a disagreement, so I ended up spooning the Duchess Potatoes into individual au gratin dishes and baking them.  They came out very nicely with lots of little brown crispy bits all over the surface. 

On to the main dish…we are all huge mushroom fans in our house!  The recipe for the sauce called for “dry sautéing” the mushrooms, meaning that butter or oil was not added except at the very end for flavor.  I really loved the intense flavor that this brought to the mushrooms … almost beefy.  Bill grilled the flank steak to a perfect medium rare for us. Bravo! 

As for our dessert, various cake-y desserts topped with fruit are referred to by many names:  crisp, crumble, cobbler, grunt, slump, brown betty, kuchen, but this was a new one to me:  buckle.  Same type of dessert, though, a simple cake batter covered with fruit and baked.  The recipe called for huckleberries, which are nowhere to be found in SC!  So we used blueberries.  Upon doing a little research, I’ve found that huckleberries are very similar to blueberries but they are NOT grown commercially (being resistant to domestication) and are only harvested in the wild.  Mystery solved!

Next up:  Ben’s turn!  He chose Kentucky – and we see the kids again this weekend, so it will be faster for the blog update!