The last of the Missouri Mule Piss bites the dust

One of the times we campground hosted in Missouri we purchased a 6-pack of a locally brewed beer. I wasn't real thrilled with the purchase -- the beverage was an India Pale Ale and I've never cared much for IPAs -- but I'm not real keen on beer in general. I figured the S.O. was the person most likely to drink it, ergo, it was his problem if it turned out to be swill. At the time I made a joke or two about maybe the mule on the can was a warning, you know, truth in advertising as to where the liquid originated. The S.O. laughed.

He wasn't laughing long. Holy wah. The Missouri Mule Piss may win some sort of award for the bitterest beer we've tasted in a long, long time. He and the Kid managed to choke down most of it, but one lonely can migrated to the back of the fridge and sat there. And sat there. It became a well-traveled beer: north to the U.P.,  possibly back down to Missouri in the Guppy (we bought it in Licking so got it over a year ago), then back up to the U.P., into the cabin for the second time, and then finally down here to Missouri. We're just too damn cheap frugal to throw an unopened can of beer away. I guess in the back of our minds we were thinking sooner or later someone we weren't overly fond of would visit and we'd inflict the Mule Piss on that person.

I was also kind of thinking that maybe I'd try a Belgian beef stew recipe out of the cookbook I've been working my way through for the past almost 50 years. I got The American Home All-Purpose Cookbook back in 1969 with the goal of eventually trying every recipe in it. Never happened, of course. Never even came close. Still, every so often I open it and decide to try something we haven't had before, like the stew that includes a can of beer as an ingredient.

Today was that day. The Mule Piss is now simmering on the stove and I'm busy hoping that the various other ingredients mellow it enough that the end result is edible. Cookbooks always warn you not to use bad wine for cooking; the same is no doubt true of beer. I decided to live dangerously -- how bad can it be? After all, the cookbook just says "beer" as an ingredient, possibly because back when it was printed in the 1960s you didn't have much choice in what was on the shelves at the local Piggly Wiggly. They don't tell you to go search for an imported beer crafted by monks; apparently ordinary Pabst Blue Ribbon would do. Just for the heck of it, I Googled Belgian beef stew and discovered, of course, that the preferred variety would be a dark ale, not a pale one. Well, at least the Mule Piss is an ale, albeit one without much color.

The American Home recipe:

Carbonnades a la Flamande

2 tbs fat or pure vegetable oil
2 cups sliced onions
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tbs fat or pure vegetable oil
3 lbs chuck or round, cut in 2-inch cubes
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp leaf thyme, crumbled
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 bottle or can (12 oz.) beer
1 envelope granulated beef bouillon
1 cup water
Chopped parsley

Heat 2 tablespoons fat or oil in large kettle or Dutch oven. Saute onion and garlic until soft and lightly browned; remove; reserve. Heat 2 additional tablespoons fat or oil in kettle; brown meat very well on all sides. This will take 10 to 15 minutes. Add onions, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, salt, pepper, beer, beef bouillon, and water. Bring to boiling; lower heat; simmer 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until meat is tender. Remove bay leaves. Thicken gravy, if desired, with 1 tablespoon flour blended with 1/4 cup water and 1 teaspoon vinegar; add to stew; stir until thickened and bubbly. Sprinkle stew with chopped parsley. Traditionally served with boiled potatoes. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Time to dig out the canning kettle

Or, more accurately, the pressure canner.

The green beans are just about ready to pick, and I always pressure can them. It's odd -- canned green beans are one of the things that food snobs are fond of mocking. I'm not sure why. Must have something do with the idea that if the produce isn't so fresh it still has caterpillars crawling on it it's not any good. I don't know. . . having seen how many cabbage worms can come floating to the surface when I cook fresh broccoli from the garden, I'm fine with vegetables being throughly cooked. If there's going to be any added protein, I'd rather not eat it rare. But, as usual, I digress.

Using the pressure canner is one of those things that makes me a tad nervous. Not as nervous as it used to, not since the top blew off a jar of beets in the canner a couple years ago, but it still makes me nervous. The beets experience, which did involve an interesting noise, demonstrated that even if a jar does blow up, the canner is going to contain the mess. We're not at risk of being hit by shards of glass if we happen to be close to the stove when a jar lets go. So I will can beans, both the bush type and pole, and then divide up however many jars there happen to be between various family members.

Beans are the only thing I'll probably use the pressure canner for this year. The only reason I canned beets a couple years ago is we were given a 5-gallon pail full of them. If I have to buy beets, it'll be for purposes of pickling, and pickled beets can be done in an ordinary canner.

I had decided I wasn't going to do much canning this summer. If we're going to be snowbirds, I don't need the hassle of trying to figure out what to do with multiple cases of home-canned food. On the other hand, I'm going to be dealing with the beans no matter what. . . and if I have to deal with beans, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to buy some of those Michigan peaches the fruit stand has. They are remarkably good peaches, and it was kind of nice having multiple jars of them on hand when I bought a 1/2 bushel to preserve a couple summers ago. Or, if not actual canned peaches, maybe get at least enough to do some peach jam. And if I'm going to go through the hassle of peeling peaches, how much more work would it be to also think about some roasted garlic and tomatoes pasta sauce? The recipe only makes about 7 pints -- how much space could 7 pint jars possibly take up? And maybe some bread and butter pickles. . . and pickled cauliflower. . . and it's going to be a good year for apples. Surely some apple marmalade and some canned apple pie filling would be nice to have with us, too.

I think I need to buy more lids.

(When that bottle blew in the pressure canner, the most surprising thing was how neatly it did it. The glass broke in a nice, clean line right about where the shoulder of the jar is, the part where it curves in to start forming the neck. It wasn't a straight line all the way around but it was close. And the World War II era graphic intrigues me. I did not realize they were still using zinc lids and wire bale jars in the 1940s.)