Eating and Being
Cooking with a grin not a menu, all served up on a little cracked plate.
No Fridge, One Burner, Two Weeks: Cooking Aboard a Small Sailboat at Shackleford Banks
My wrist caught the bowl of oatmeal on Grit‘s galley table. It did a steamy Charlie Brown loop and landed next to the centerboard case with a plop, spraying oatmeal across the settee.
“Damn I miss the dogs,” I thought. “Lucky and Diggity would have licked this up in seconds.”
Instead I spooned the oatmeal back into my bowl and chewed carefully, avoiding the grittiest bits. Welcome to Oatmeal à la Grit.
Here’s how my wife Julia and… Continue reading
How to Make Cowboy Coffee on a Covered Wagon
Do you feel like Mr Coffee is taking too long to do his thing? This week I rigged up my wood stove on the covered wagon I’m taking on my next ramble with PBS North Carolina. Climb aboard for a cup of cowboy coffee straight off the covered wagon’s wood stove.
Get a Copy of my New Book… Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving From the Shoebox Canyon
Happy Thanksgiving from our cabin up the… Continue reading
Join my Mules For a Cup of Coffee Cooked on Our BioLite Wood Stove
Howdy. Instead of carrying a conventional camping stove on my mule ramble up the Virginia Highlands Horse Trail, I used a BioLite wood stove. It uses sticks instead of gasoline or propane. Click on the video below to join me for a cup of wood-brewed coffee.
For an in depth review of what it’s like to spend a month cooking on a BioLite wood cook stove, check out Now We’re Cooking With Wood.
Read more posts from this ramble:… Continue reading
Hoppin’ John: Happy New Year 2024
Are the wars, political unrest and climate change making you nervous about what’s to come in 2024? This year, instead of paying attention to the bad news, you need to focus on improving your luck. For me, that means starting January 1 with Hoppin’ John.
Getting to Know Hoppin’ John
I first came across Hoppin’ John in Oriental, North Carolina, while writing for TownDock.net. A neighbor of… Continue reading
How to Catch a Snake in Your House
A rat snake in the house sounds alarming. Ours turned up tangled in the cookstove.
I was taking a nap when I heard my wife Julia say, “honey, can you come here?” I walked into the kitchen and saw Julia looking at the cookstove. Our cookstove is a two-burner camp stove hooked to a twenty-pound propane tank. It’s black and greasy. I didn’t see anything. Then I saw the black snake next to the pot we boil our coffee in.… Continue reading
Mule Mushrooming: Hunting ‘Aeyer Schweumli’ from the Saddle
My mom used to point them out to us as kids. We’d be walking through the forest in western North Carolina and she’d point down at an orange mushroom and say, “Lueg. As Aeyer Schweumli”. “Lueg” means “look” in Swiss German, her native language. Aeyer Schweumli is what she used to call chanterelles.*
My brother Christian recalls a… Continue reading
In Praise of Salamander Water Part Two: Keeping the Cistern on the Hill
Last week I told you how my wife Julia went to turn on the tap in the kitchen and we didn’t have water. I thought it might have been a salamander plugging up the works. It turned out our cistern was about to topple off the hill.
In Praise of Salamander Water: Part 1
“There’s no water in the kitchen sink,” my wife Julia told me recently and I knew it was one of two things. Our water comes from a spring behind our cabin. Either a salamander or a crayfish had gotten stuck in the plumbing or the cistern that gathered the spring water was empty.
BioLite Stove Review: Now We’re Cooking With Wood
My wife Julia and I have used a BioLite stove on our latest car camping trip, a 7,000-mile cross country ramble from North Carolina to California. We cooked all our meals while camping on the Biolite stove. Who knew you could use twigs and pine cones to boil pasta and charge your phone? In this post, I review the BioLite cook stove. Read on to learn if cooking and charging your phone with a wood-fired stove might work on your… Continue reading
Butterbean, Mule Wrestling and Old Dog Guy Christmas Greetings
Merry Christmas from the homestead up the holler. “I’ll be Home For Christmas” is playing (the Bing Crosby version), the wood stove is glowing and Snookie is pondering another cookie. “I’ll be Home for Christmas” rings true this year, just not in the original way it was meant (it was written from the point of view of a WWII soldier stationed abroad). With Covid numbers spiking, my wife Julia and I are hunkering… Continue reading
The Garlic Journal: How Long It Takes to Grow a Head of Garlic
How long does it take to grow a head of garlic? Today I found out.
Last December, Scott, one of our hunt club members, gave my wife Julia and me 30 heads of garlic. They were amazingly delicious, grown by Scott in his garden. This, I vowed, I would have to try.
Two Year Old Potatoes
My fingers sift the fall chill soil and grub out a 2 year old treasure. Forgotten potatoes.
Two seasons ago I planted a row of potatoes in the fringe of orchard that borders the brook that flows through our homestead. The year I planted them I failed to harvest them. The following year – this year – I rode away on mules Brick and Cracker for the summer.
Whiskey Bottle Cake
Today’s the Big Day. Dad turns 87. Happy birthday dad!
My dad Arthur Harberts is my closest friend. He’s also my traveling hero and the man who taught me one of life’s most important lessons – improvise. This year, when I came up short in the cake department, I… Continue reading
