In our quest for a St. Patrick’s corned beef and cabbage that doesn’t turn into an unidentifiable mush, we’ve embraced a method for cooking all of the ingredients separately a day before serving. Now that our local butcher is supplying the cured brisket, we’ve got a new way of cooking that as well.

Everyone’s experienced the traditional corned beef and cabbage dish where all of the ingredients are thrown into a pot and boiled like crazy until it looks–and tastes–like something you’d get from an Army field kitchen. Since the traditional ingredients–cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and the beef–all cook at different rates, boiling them all together guarantees failure.

Starting our latest effort a day ahead with a pot of boiling broth (chicken works fine, I used what we make at home from beef bones), I cooked thickly sliced carrots first because they take the longest, then parsnips, then golden beets, then small white onions, thick slices of leeks, wedges of cabbage and finally the potatoes, diced large with skins on. Each vegetable in its turn was cooked until just done, then removed from the pot with a slotted spoon and decoratively arranged on a ceramic platter to cool. Eventually I covered the platter with plastic and placed it in the refrigerator overnight.

As to the beef, we bought a 4 lb. slab of cured brisket from our local butcher, Mr. Yushak, and cut it in half, wrapping the other half for the freezer. Originally I had planned to boil the brisket as usual, but Mr. Yushak insisted I not do that, since he had applied a complicated mix of spices to the beef and had meticulously tended it over a 12-day “dry” cure, meaning the beef was never submerged in a conventional brine. He suggested I cook the meat “like a pot roast,” or, in the alternative, steam it so as not to dilute the intense spice flavor.

My solution was to re-use the pot and broth (with more water added) that I’d cooked the vegetables in. I placed three ceramic ramekins at the bottom of the pot and laid a round wire cooling rack on top of these to hold the meat above the liquid. After bringing the pot to a boil and sealing the lid with a piece of parchment paper, I placed the pot in a 180-degree F oven and let it steam. We found the meat was done to our taste after six hours. (You could cook it longer at a lower temperature, or shorter at a higher temp–low and slow yields the tenderest meat.)

Yesterday we had friends over and greeted them with a platter of Irish cheeses and an Irish whiskey cocktail. As an hors d’oeuvre, we offered shots of our reserved cooking liquid, which by this time was loaded with all the flavors of  our assorted vegetables and the drippings from the beefy brisket.

The plattered vegetables were now warming in the over, as was a separate platter of the sliced brisket. When mealtime arrived, we simply displayed the platters on the kitchen island with a small pitcher of the cooking juice as dressing and a horse radish cream sauce to be spooned onto the meat as desired. People happily served themselves.

That would be our idea of a perfect corned beef and cabbage.

We love deviled eggs, but there’s so much anxiety around the issue of the shells peeling cleanly from the hard-boiled eggs. It’s such a disappointment when they don’t, leaving big, unsightly gouges in the those perfectly formed whites. The reason for this–scientifically speaking–is because of membranes–called chalazea–that attach the egg to the inside of the shell called . This is supposed to keep the egg centered and safe while a chick is developing. Chick or no, the egg will cling to the shell when fresh. Only as the egg gets older do these membranes degrade and the clinging ease.

For this reason, common wisdom held that it was better to use old eggs for hard-boiling (poaching is just the opposite–use eggs as fresh as possible). But how are you supposed to know how old those eggs are in the carton you just purchased?

We’ve tried all kinds of methods for hard-boiled eggs to solve the peeling problem. For a while we were using a complicated process recommended by Julia Child that involved immersing the cooked eggs alternately in hot, then iced water. That did not always work.

But now we’ve discovered a way to hard-boil eggs that always peel perfectly. We don’t care how young or old our eggs are any more.

To hard-boil six to eight eggs, mix six cups water with 1/4 cup distilled vinegar and 1 Tablespoon salt. Bring to a boil. Gently place the eggs in the boiling water and cook at a slow boil uncovered for 14 minutes. Then drain the eggs and run them under cold water in the pot until they are cool to the touch. Peel. You’ll be amazed how easily the shells are removed.

Now you are ready to make whatever deviled eggs you prefer. My favorite has a Szechuan kick:

After slicing the eggs in half lengthwise, display the whites on a plate lined with fresh salad greens. Mash the yolks in a mixing bowl, then blend with 3 Tablespoons mayonnaise (or to taste), 1 Tablespoon garlic chili paste and a pinch of salt. In a skillet, toast 1 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorns, then grind to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder. Add this to the yolk mix.

Spoon or pipe the yolk mix into the whites and garnish with chopped chives.

Voila! A perfect start to your next virtual cocktail party.

Stay safe, y’all!

Edward H. Bruske III, my father, the singularly focused, relentlessly striving and emotionally distant owner of a small Midwestern brush factory who personified the American spirit of entrepreneurial grit and self-made success, died today of natural causes three days before his 91^st birthday.

Born in Chicago to sturdy German stock, my father raised bees and studied whistling as a boy, was an accomplished football and basketball player at the Swedish North Park Academy and married his high school sweetheart, the captain of the cheer leading squad, whose parents had preferred she finish secretarial school and settle down with a nice bank vice-president. Their partnership survived seven turbulent decades.

After studying business at Northwestern University, my father and his bride moved to Tacoma, WA, where he planned a career in timber but instead found his calling as a Fuller Brush man, selling household and personal products door-to-door. He quickly rose to the company’s industrial division and moved back to the Midwest: first Des Moines, where the struggling couple  redeemed savings bonds to pay the mortgage, then to Park Forest in suburban Chicago  where, as a sales manager, dad learned to fly his own plane in order to cover a territory that encompassed a large swath of several states.

Drawn to the John Birch Society while the civil rights movement was roiling the country, my father’s attitude toward politics and government was strictly libertarian. His investment approach was quirky, sometimes disastrously so. Even as an accomplished salesman he seemed especially drawn to outlandish business schemes. At home, he was alternately sentimental and controlling, kind hearted and domineering, jovial and aloof. Deep in his own world, he could devour an entire take-out pizza watching football without sharing a single bite. Roused to discipline his five children, he applied a thick, leather dog strap to boy and girls alike. His special delight on Sunday mornings was tuning the radio to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and cranking the volume loud enough to wake the whole house, then dragging us all to sit in the front pew at Faith United Protestant Church for 9 a.m. services. We weren’t rich, but he had enough to send all five kids to college and keep a fleet of Saabs in the driveway.

As a sideline, my father raised champion Labrador retrievers and turned show and field trials into a version of family vacations. When Fuller Brush was purchased by Consolidated Foods, my father’s renegade views ran afoul of the new management and after being fired he scraped together enough money to start his own company—Bruske Products–out of an old turn screw factory in Tinley Park, IL, manufacturing push brooms, street sweepers and other brushes for industrial and retail use. The company expanded into a new building and thrived for many years, with salesmen nationwide, but lately had fallen on hard times under intense competition from China and after totally missing the advent of online marketing.

My father traveled and read widely, was a regular patron of Chicago theater, but maintained simple habits. He rarely missed Judge Judy and “Bounty Hunter” on television. He ordered discount clothes through the mail, relished cheese in a state well beyond putrefacation and prided himself on a makeshift wine cellar stocked with the cheapest quaffable vintages he could find. He took lunch at a Greek diner near the factory, finished everyone else’s dessert at Thanksgiving and insisted on being the one to hand out presents from under the Christmas tree one at a time. Having undergone heart bypass surgery years earlier, his health declined rapidly in recent months. After returning from this year’s annual February sojourn at the parents’ condo in Puerto Vallarta, his heart was clearly giving out, he may have had a stroke and he finally lapsed into renal failure. In typically irascible fashion, he refused to check himself into the local hospital for treatment and was running the family business to the very end, even though he kept falling down in his clothes closet and needed help getting in and out of his car.

He died in bed under hospice care.

He is survived by his wife, Priscilla; his sister, Barbara Perloff, of Appleton, WI; myself and four daughters, Diane, Susan and Laura—all residing in the Chicago area—and Linda, of Boynton Beach, FL, as well as eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Instead of sending flowers, please hug your kids.

Sunday means fresh donuts around our small town as the King family wheels their bakery cart out to the sidewalk on Main Street. But today we found something different. First, there was a hand sanitizing station available for customers and red lines had been spray-painted on the walkway to keep people a safe distance apart. And there was something else: a second wagon the Kings loaned to Round House Bakery–our local cafe–where owners Scott and Lisa offered fresh breads and frozen goods.

Round House had briefly remained open for take-out orders after the pandemic struck but this week closed completely and laid of its staff. So Scott and Lisa have been looking for a way to make some sales. Partnering with the ever-popular Sunday donut operation seems like a good bet.

Even in 21-degree weather, a line had formed at 8 a.m. There were also stacks of boxed pastry pre-orders on the front porch. My wife and daughter got a bunch of their favorites–meltaways, glazed donuts and bismark–some for now, some to freeze.

So if you’re reading this Sunday morning, do hurry down and support two local Cambridge institutions: King’s Donuts and Round House Bakery.

Here’s the Round House menu:

I’ve stood at the kitchen counter with a salt cellar trying to eat all the gorgeous tomatoes coming out of our garden. It’s a losing battle. Thankfully, someone invented tomato pie.

Because it’s slathered in mayonnaise, I’m guessing this dish is Southern. All I know is, it uses a lot of tomatoes so bring it on! Just layer tomato slices in a pie shell, spread a mayo and cheese mixture all over and bake in the oven. Well, maybe not quite so easily as that.

After making three of these pies, we’ve concluded: 1) drying the tomato slices a good long while before putting them in the pie is essential; 2) more mayo and cheese is better than less; 3) baking longer at a lower temperature cooks the tomatoes just enough without burning the crust; 4) I prefer fresh thyme to basil to season my tomato pie; and 5) there must be bacon.

A day ahead, gather 2 pounds of your best tomatoes. Cut out the stems, remove the bottoms, then cut the tomatoes into thick slices. To remove excess moisture–so your pie doesn’t turn into a soggy mess–season both sides of the tomato slices with kosher salt and drain, either by spreading them on paper towels or on pie racks set inside a sheet pan. Start this in the afternoon and set the tomatoes aside. Before you go to bed, flip the tomatoes (put down fresh paper towels if using) and allow to continue draining overnight. You will be amazed how much liquid they produce.

For your pie shell, you can certainly buy one pre-baked at the grocery but homemade is better. If you choose the latter, start this also the day ahead. You will need:

A 9-inch glass or ceramic pie plate

Pie weights

Aluminum foil

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon sugar

3 Tablespoons chilled lard or vegetable shortening

4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) chilled unsalted butter

4-5 Tablespoons ice water

In a food processor, process flour, salt and sugar until combined. Add lard (or vegetable shortening) and process until the mixture looks like coarse sand. Cut butter into 1/4-inch pieces and scatter over the mix. Process until mix looks like pale yellow crumbs.

Empty the mix into a medium bowl and drizzle in 4 Tablespoons ice water, spreading it around as much as possible. With a spatula, fold the mix and press down until it just holds together, adding more ice water if necessary. Turn the dough out onto a piece of plastic wrap and flatten it into a 4-inch disc. Wrap the dough and place in the refrigerator overnight.

Next day, heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Unwrap your dough, place on a floured work surface and roll to a fairly thin, 12-inch round, large enough to overlap the edges of your pie plate by about an inch. If you’ve never done this before, you might want to watch a tutorial on Youtube because after you’ve rolled it out you will need to wrap the dough around your rolling pin and transfer it into your pie plate. When it’s centered, you can press the dough snug inside the plate, roll up the outer edge of the dough onto the rim of the plate and make a decorative fluting.

Refrigerate the dough-lined pie plate 1 hour, then place in the freezer 30 minutes. Remove from the freezer and lightly press a 12-inch piece of aluminum foil inside the pie dough and fill to a depth of about 1 inch with pie weights, either the ceramic or metal marbles made specifically for this purpose or dried beans.

Bake pie shell in the oven on a lower-middle rack for 25-30 minutes, or until the dough looks dry and is still light in color. Carefully remove the foil and weights, then continue baking another 5 or 6 minutes, until the crust is lightly browned. Remove from oven and allow to thoroughly cool.

When you are ready to fill your pie, you will need:

5 ounces bacon (5 or 6 slices) cooked and cut into bite-size pieces

Butter crackers such as Ritz, about 1/2 sleeve, crushed

Drained tomato slices

2 Tablespoons fresh thyme leaves (or substitute a small fistful chopped basil)

1 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup Greek yogurt or sour cream

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Fresh tomato slices for garnish

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix mayo, yogurt (or sour cream) and cheese in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper as desired. Dust bottom of pie crust with cracker crumbs to absorb excess moisture. Cover with a layer of previously drained tomatoes. Sprinkle tomatoes with 1/3 of the bacon and 1/3 of the thyme leaves, then cover with 1/3 of the mayo mix, spreading evenly with a small spatula. Repeat with 2 more layers of tomatoes, bacon, thyme and mayo. Finish pie by dusting the top with remaining cracker  crumbs and garnishing with fresh tomato slices.

Place the pie on a sheet pan and bake at least 1 hour and up to 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 140-150 degrees as measured by an instant-read thermometer and the crust is golden brown.

Serve warm with a glass of your favorite white wine.

The day before Thanksgiving the animals went out to graze but Emily, our Jersey cow, was nowhere to be seen among them. I found her lying on her side in the mud in front of the shelter in the main paddock. The vet who arrived a couple of hours later declared Emily hypothermic. With record cold temperatures bearing down, we dragged her behind the tractor into the shelter, covered her with hay and blankets, and began a three-week process of trying to nurse her back to health.

Alas, it was not to be. Emily never regained her appetite and was never upright again. Turns out, she had nursed her calves over the summer literally to the point of exhaustion. With bitter cold again approaching, yesterday we decided she had suffered enough. The local cow disposal unit carried her away.

Emily was a yearling when I bought her from a local dairy. She was in a head restraint with other young heifers inside a barn and had never been outdoors. We loaded her into the back of the pickup and set her loose to graze 12 acres of pasture. Over the ensuing five years, she gave us three calves and lots of milk that we turned into butter and cheese. She had one fetus die, and was always pretty small and skinny even for a Jersey. Yet Emily was tough and resilient even through record snow and cold spells.

Apparently what killed her was trying to nurse two calves simultaneously. One was a year old when the second was born. The older steer continued to nurse until we butchered him in October. I thought that offering Emily fresh pasture, sun and water, would be enough–nature would take care of the rest. But according to the vet, modern cows just aren’t designed to operate that way. They need supplemental feed. I felt really dumb. A bucket of grain each day would have been all Emil needed to survive two calves in fine fettle.

Bill Elsworth, the elderly farmer who sells us our non-GMO feed, was consoling. “It wasn’t dumb, Ed,” he said with his best bedside manner. “It was just inexperience.”

Of course we feel terrible that Emily had to suffer the consequences of our naiveté. We will sorely miss her. But the last calf was a female, a cross with a Red Angus bull. We named her Daisy. She is in line to become our next breeder cow. And what a great mom she is replacing.

I’m sure it’s karma. We gloated when we installed a new, top-of-the-line water hydrant next to the livestock paddock. No longer would we have worry about the water freezing in the middle of winter. And we were rewarded for digging up the old hydrant–until a few weeks ago. For no apparent reason, the new hydrant froze solid and we ate crow. We’re back to hauling water in five-gallon buckets from the kitchen sink. Many times a day do we haul.

That’s not our only winter woe. January thaws followed by arctic blasts left a skating rink where we normally water the animals. The water troughs were surrounded by ice, and I realized the sheep and cows weren’t drinking because they were afraid of falling. We keep the water liquid with electric heating elements that sit at the bottom of the troughs. Fortunately, there was just enough play in one extension cord to move one of the troughs to a safe spot. Of course the rest of the cord was frozen in a coil under the ice.

I had also prided myself two years ago on a decision to install an electric heater on my diesel tractor engine so I could get it started in the coldest temperatures. er Diesel engines don’t like cold. I think I had used this new piece of equipment twice before it, too, gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. The tractor is so handy at moving snow. Now I’m back to shoveling by hand.

All of which goes to say that this winter is a bit harder than we’d like because our gadgets have failed. The body aches. I often wonder how farmers coped before all these modern conveniences. Now I know: with difficulty.

It began with a knock on the door.

“Have you lost a goat?” asked a neighbor who lives down the road. “A small white one with a big yellow ear tag?”

I couldn’t imagine how one of our goats might have gotten loose. More importantly, our goats don’t wear ear tags. But I agreed  to follow our neighbor back to his house for a look. Sure enough, there was this buckling–about six months old–peering at us from the yard and ready to run if we took one step in his direction. He looked just like our own buck–Tigger–who had bolted from our property just minutes after we brought him home from the breeder four years ago. Tigger was missing a whole month before a neighbor pointed us to a vacant home nearby where the runaway had taken up residence. It took me further weeks of offering him grain to gain his trust and finally recapture him.

I explained to the neighbor how difficult it would be to nab the latest escapee. I suggested he call the sheriff, then drove into town to run some errands.

Less than an hour later I returned home to the strangest sight. There standing outside our goat shelter was this very same little goat with the yellow ear tag. Not only had he found his way up the hill to our herd of goats, he’d somehow gotten inside our electric fencing. It was the first I’d ever heard of a goat breaking into a farm.

I had no time to deal with him as I was scheduled to leave town on other business the following morning. Next thing I heard, our new friend was jumping our fences at will and causing all kinds of consternation. The last thing we need in mating season is an interloping, sexed-up buckling crashing our herd. Our goats are normally well behaved. They don’t even try to escape.

I told my wife that if we couldn’t find someone to take the goat away I might have to shoot it when I returned. My wife made a beeline for the village liquor store, which acts as a hub for local news and gossip. The owner immediately posted the story of the runaway goat on the store’s Facebook page. Within minutes, a woman on the other side of town replied that the same white buckling had been hanging around her house five days earlier. She assumed it had gotten loose from the auction barn not too distant.

Sure enough, when my wife called the auction house she learned that a buckling with that ear tag escaped the previous Tuesday after being sold. The owner was now empty handed; the goat had wandered some five miles to find us.

Two days later, to our great relief, employees from the auction barn arrived to try and apprehend the escapee. Our clever daughter used one of our fetching females to lure the miscreant through a gate into the main paddock where he was chased into corner and snagged.

Last time I looked, we had no strange goats on our pastures. But around here you never know….

Andrew’s back!

Our opera-singing friend this year performs as the snake oil salesman in “L’elisire d’Amore” (The Elixir of Love)  at  Hubbard Hall and he hasn’t lost his magic touch with our Freedom Ranger broilers.

For some reason, opera singers are especially adept at eviscerating chickens. Maybe it’s the controlled breathing. Andrew showed his skills last time he was here two years ago, and this year he didn’t miss a beat when it came time for the July harvest.

We typically market 50 Freedom Rangers each month June through October. From the time they arrive here as baby chicks until they are bagged and offered for sale, our broilers are raised entirely by hand on green pasture with supplemental non-GMO feed from a local grower. When the time comes, we process by hand as well: I’m in charge of killing and plucking; my wife handles the eviscerating and final detailing. Clients often comment on how beautiful our finished birds truly are.

Andrew stays with us for almost a month rehearsing and performing the annual opera. In addition to helping Lane with eviscerating, he lends a hand daily feeding and watering the chickens and moving them to fresh pasture. It’s a great relief. If only he didn’t have to leave so soon.